Claude Opus 5 (Low) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5 (Low) by Anthropic or Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) by Anthropic? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs Claude Opus 5 (Low): 3.6% more intelligence, 60.1% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 45.5% faster end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5 (Low) | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 39.4 | 40.8 | +3.6% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Me… is 3.6% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,560.91 | $622.28 | −60.1% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Me… is 60.1% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 11.37s | 6.20s | −45.5% Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Me… is 45.5% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $5.00 / $25.0 | $2.00 / $10.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5 (Low) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
Claude Opus 5 (Low)Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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